Exams_for-students

Extra-linguistic factors of the development of the Germanic group of languages within the Indo-European language family.

The Old Germanic Languages: Western Germanic, North Germanic and Eastern Germanic old languages and the reason for this subdivision within the Germanic group of languages; linguistic features of West Germanic languages, classification of languages given by Engels and Pliny.

The classification of modern Germanic languages within the Indo-European language family, problems of classification and differentiation, common linguistic features of the Germanic languages.

Word stress in the Germanic languages: the peculiar system of word accentuation in Pro-Germanic vs IE word stress; the role of word stress in the development of the Germanic languages.

The consonantal system of the Old Germanic languages: types of consonants, the first sound (consonant) shift (Grimm’s law) and its interpretation and chronology, Verner’s law; the second sound shift.

The vocalic system of the Germanic languages: differentiation of vowels, independent vowel changes in Pro-Germanic, mutation of vowels in Late PG.

Phonetic changes of Old English vowels: breaking (fracture),front (palatal) mutation (I-umlaut), velar (back) mutation, contraction, lengthening of vowels, changes of unstressed vowels in Early Old English, Old English vowel system.

Phonetic changes of Old English consonants: voicing and devoicing of fricatives, assimilation, gemination, hardening, rhotacism and etc,

Old English consonantal system: origin of OE consonants, velar consonants in Early OE the growth of new consonants, loss of consonants in some position in OE.

The main historic events in the ME period: the Scandinavian invasion and its influence on the linguistic situation, the Norman invasion and its influence on the linguistic situation.

Old English and Middle English dialects: OE tribal dialects and their geographic distribution, heptarchy: the country of seven states and the four principal Anglo-Saxon dialects,ME regional dialects as the continuation of OE, their distribution and further development, trilingual activity in ME.

Qualitative and quantitative changes in ME vocalic system: unstressed vowels, main trends in the changes of stressed vowels, development of monophthongs and diphthongs, system of vowels in Late ME.

Spelling changes in ME and the rules of reading: the replacement of OE runic letters, the introduction of new letters, the historic reasons for replacement of OE letters.

The Great Vowel Shift: stages in ME and NE period, involved sounds (monophthongs and diphthongs), changes in the names of some English letters; examples of changed vowels.

The changes in ME consonantal system: evolution of consonants, growth of affricates and sibilants.

Grammatical Structure of the Old English Language (synthetical features: a developed system of parts of speech, grammatical endings, ablaut in the root morphemes, grammatical prefixes of verbs, suppletive formations: be̅o̅n). Morphological classification of OE verbs: strong, weak, preterite-present and etc.

Strong verbs in OE: seven classes and their conjugation (give examples of each class: infinitive, past tense sing., past tense pl., participle II; conjugate strong verbs).

Weak verbs in OE: three classes and their conjugation (give examples of each class: infinitive, past tense sing., past tense pl., participle II; conjugate weak verbs).

Preterite-present OE verbs and their morphology, (give examples and conjugate the OE verbs). Point out the traces of OE preterite-present verbs in modern modal English verbs.

Suppletive verbs in OE (bēon/wesan, ჳān [gān]), their morphological peculiarity, conjugation, and origin; the traces of OE suppletive verbs in the system of modern English verbs.

Anomalous verbs in OE (willan, do̅n), their irregular forms, meaning and morphological specificity; the traces of OE anomalous verbs in the system of modern English verbs .

The sources of regular and irregular verbs in English. Changes in the morphological classes of verbs in ME (note that OE strong verbs passed into weak conjugation: helpan - healp - hulpon – holpen/ to help; OE weak verbs macian(weak class 2), tellan, sellan  (weak class 1) ). Why would it be incorrect to apply the terms “strong” and “weak” to the modern system of English verbs?

The grammar categories of the finite verb in the OE period and their correlations in Gothic. The evolution of the verb system in ME and NE: the simplification of the conjugation, grammaticalization, the expansion of the verb paradigm.

The growth of new forms: the development of new grammatical categories; the Future Tense, new analytical forms of the Subjunctive Mood in the ME, causes of grammatical changes.

The category of voice in the ME period: the development of the Passive analytical forms, causes of grammatical changes in ME, the growth and extension of application of the Passive Voice in Early NE.

The development of the Perfect Tenses in ME and its source in OE, the stabilization of the formal perfect pattern. The category of time-correlation in ME.

The development of Continuous forms in ME, its source in OE. The category of aspect. (Note that English progressive as a full tense is a relatively unique verbal development in languages)

The development of analytical interrogative and negative forms with the auxiliary verb do in Early NE as a new set of analytical forms in the paradigm of the Present and Past Tenses of the Indicative Mood; the ME source this development.

The development of the infinitive in Germanic languages: the double nature of the infinitive; the Gothic infinitive; the OE infinitive and its grammatical categories; the simplification of the infinitival inflections in the ME period; the development of new grammatical forms of the infinitive in ME and NE.

The development of the gerund in Germanic languages: the double nature of the gerund; the OE verbal substantive in -ung/ing and their syntactic features; the ME gerundive changes; the verbal characteristics of the gerund in NE.

The development of the participle in Germanic languages: the double nature of the participle; the present participle and the past participle in Gothic; the OE participle as a form of a verbal adjective, the voice and tense distinctions of OE Participle I and Participle II; the development of new participial grammar forms in ME and NE.

Old Germanic and OE noun categories and their connection with the PIE nominal categories. The morphological structure of nouns in old Germanic languages. The use of cases in OE and their meaning.

The morphological classification of OE nouns. Types of declension in old Germanic languages and in OE (Point out instances of variation in the noun paradigm). Why are they termed ‘stems’? Explain the difference between the groupings of nouns into types of declension.

Simplification of the case system and types of declension in ME: intra-linguistic and extra-linguistic factors of the decline of the OE declension system; grammatical categories of nouns in ME; dialectal differences in declensions in ME, innumerate the changes of the noun system from OE to ME. The grammatical categories of nouns in NE.

Adjectives and their grammatical categories in Old Germanic languages and in OE, similarity to the noun paradigm, the peculiar features of declension, the grammatical suffixes.

OE strong and weak declension of adjectives. Study the cart illustrating the relations between the declensions of nouns, adjectives and pronouns (A History of English by T.A. Rastorgueva p. 106). What were the factors that determined the choice of declension in OE? Comment on the homonymous grammatical forms of adjectives. What OE adjectives were always declined strong? What OE adjectives were always declined weak?

The simplification of adjectival paradigms in ME. The changes of the adjectives in ME in comparison with OE. What was the geographical direction of the changes in ME? Speak on the order of the decay of the adjectival grammar categories. What was the difference in the declension of monosyllabic and polysyllabic adjectives in ME?

The degrees of comparison of adjectives in OE: three degrees, suffixes of the degrees of comparison, the interchange of the root vowel in comparatives and superlatives, suppletive forms.

The degrees of comparison of adjectives in ME. The alteration of the forms of ME degrees of comparison. The growth of analytical forms in the system of comparison and their OE sources. ‘Double comparatives’ and ‘double superlatives’ in Early NE. Give comments to the following English idioms: the lesser lights, the lesser poets, the Lesser Bear.

OE personal pronouns: grammar categories of case, person and number; declension of the personal pronouns. The suppletive forms of the 1^st and 2^nd person. Comment on the homonymous forms that can represent two cases or genders, innumerate the homonymous forms of OE personal pronouns.

The evolution of pronouns in ME: ME personal pronouns (basic changes, replacement of pronouns and its interpretation, grammar forms) and possessive pronouns: the lexical and grammatical changes.

OE demonstrative pronouns, their categories and declension; the syntactic function of determiners. OE adjective-pronouns and ME demonstrative pronouns: the directions of development.

OE interrogative and indefinite pronouns. Interrogative, indefinite and relative pronouns in ME.

Development of articles in ME: the sources of the indefinite and the definite articles, the reasons for the growth of articles in English.

The system of pronouns in NE (types and grammar categories).

The meaning of the term syntax. Gothic syntax. Types of syntactic links in Gothic (subordination and coordination).

Old English syntax: the phrase; subordination and coordination as types of syntactic relations; noun, adjective and verb patterns in OE;

Old English syntax The simple sentence: the word order; OE cases and their semantic and syntactic meaning; the use of prepositions; compound subjects and objects;

Old English syntax: compound, complex sentences and compound complex sentences in OE. Connectives (conjunctions, subordinate particles). Why is OE syntax flexible?

The development of the syntactic system in Middle English and Early New English: the syntax of a phrase; noun, adjective and verb patterns; causes of grammatical changes.

The development of the syntactic system in Middle English and Early New English: the syntax of a simple sentence, the word order; predicative constructions; causes of grammatical changes.

The development of the syntactic system in Middle English and Early New English: compound and complex sentences in Middle English and Early New English; the development of conjunction synonymy and the means of enrichment of conjunctions; the causes of grammatical changes of syntax; the structure of canonical clauses in NE.

OE word-stock and etymological layers:IE and Germanic vocabulary; OE vocabulary; internal means of enriching vocabulary;

Loan words in the Old English vocabulary: Celtic and Latin borrowings in OE as external means of enriching vocabulary;

Scandinavian borrowings in Late OE and Early ME; the influence of historical events on lexicon changes, English-Scandinavian etymological doublets like skirt – shirt ; the Scandinavian invasion;

Middle English vocabulary: general characteristics of ME vocabulary, types and sources of changes;

French influence on vocabulary in ME: linguistic and social aspects, the number, nature and spheres of borrowings, English-French lexical doublets like pluck - courage; vocabulary enrichment in ME and the loss of OE words; outer means of enrichment; the influence of Norman Conquest on wordstock in ME.

Borrowings from classical languages in ME and Early New English, Renaissance-era loans; the reason of the borrowings and illustrative examples.

Borrowings from contemporary languages in New English: French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and other Germanic languages, the foreign influence on the English vocabulary.

The word structure in Germanic languages: morphemes and their types, affixes as boundary morphemes and their classification, three basic structural types of words in Gothic with examples.

Word-formation in OE: ways of word formation (examples from OE); word derivation (examples from OE), sound interchanges; word stress; prefixation; word composition. Give examples.

Word formation in English in 15-17^th c: word derivation; sound interchanges, word stress; prefixation; native prefixes; borrowed prefixes; suffixation; native suffixes; borrowed suffixes; conversion.

Word composition in ME and Early NE. Morphological simplification of compound words in ME. Back formation, calquing, conversion as types of word formation in English.

Runic inscriptions in Germanic languages: the Runic alphabet and its origin, Elder Futhark, Gothic Runes, Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (or fuþorc), Younger Futhark.

Gothic alphabet and the writing system: origin and peculiarities. Codex Argenteus (The Silver Bible) as a major source of knowledge of the Gothic language, debatable issues of the language.

OE manuscripts: Anglo-Saxon Charters, Bede the Venerable, OE poets, historical background and linguistic significance.

Beowulf as an epic poem: the historical period; the main characters; alliteration, compounding, kennings, formulas and variation in the poem; the significance of Beowulf poem in the history of English literature.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicles as a valuable source of information for the history of English: versions, authors, style, syntax.

Geoffrey Chaucer as a great poet and a representative of his age: Chaucer as a symbol of the Middle Ages, historical periods of his poetic works, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s vocabulary and syntax (the number of words in his lexicon, loan words, diversity, dialectal peculiarity, morphological and phonological effects, creativity and role in literature).